[chef] Re: Ideas on kickstarting a node and auto-applying a role

[Paul Choi < >]

Adding a bit more...
One idea I have is, if it's possible:

After installing chef-client, the node should run a custom script that 
does a POST to <chef server>/nodes/<nodename>:
{
  "run_list": [
    "role[a]",
    "role[c]"
  ]
}

I don't know if a node has the right to modify its run_list or not.

On 5/14/10 11:11 AM, Paul Choi wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been mucking around with Chef for a week or so. It's pretty 
> impressive what I'm seeing so far. Coming from LAMP + Perl land (think 
> traditional sysadmin stuff) , the learning curve for Chef is a bit 
> steep, but I'm learning. :)
>
> I'm interested in using Chef with about 100-200 Linux nodes, and we 
> have about 10-ish types of hosts (web servers, API, backend, etc). 
> We've been setting up our CentOS servers with Kickstart, then apply 
> shell scripts to automate deployment.
>
> We want to be able to do something similar with Chef - the goal being, 
> kickstart a host, then install Chef RPMs, then the host should just 
> automagically get configured according to its IP, hostname, or some 
> kind of identifying criteria. Any ideas on how to do this?
>
> So far, the workflow that Chef expects is:
>   - install chef-client on node.
>   - chef-client auto-registers itself with either validation cert or 
> password
>   - Use knife to apply role(s) to the newly created node
>
> It's the manual application of role(s) to the newly created node that 
> I would like to see automated. I don't think there's a way in Chef to 
> set a rule saying, "if a host is in 10.1.12.* subnet, apply role[a], 
> role[b], role[z], etc". If I can figure out this last step, life would 
> be just awesome. :)
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> -Paul